With highway traffic and beach erosion as two growing North Shore problems, community activists headed to Laniakea Beach on Saturday, where a state lawmaker announced two new bills he said he hopes will finally spur some meaningful action on those issues.

One of the bills introduced by Sen. Clayton Hee (D, Heeia-Laie-Waialua) would take a stretch of Kamehameha Highway, from Laniakea to Chun’s Reef, and move it mauka as erosion threatens to eventually wash away the road adjacent to the beach.

Such a move has been discussed for years, receiving about $1.7 million in state funding for study — but it has received virtually no action. In 2010, a realignment of Kamehameha Highway in the area of Kawailoa Beach was even removed from an annual list of Oahu transportation officials’ top project priorities.

"At some time you fish or you cut bait. This bill causes you to fish. You no longer cut bait. You throw your line in the water," Hee said of the realignment idea Saturday, as strong, churning surf pounded Laniakea behind him. "No more talking, no more esoteric discussions."

Highway realignment could likely be completed within 10 years if the measure passes, Hee said. He did not have a cost estimate, saying it largely depended on the price to acquire land at Laniakea from the city and Kamehameha Schools.

Senate Bill 3035, introduced Friday, also aims to have the state’s Department of Land and Natural Resources create a Laniakea "wayside park" where the highway currently runs — a move Hee and residents there say would ease the persistent traffic woes from pedestrians crossing and would better accommodate visitors and the Hawaiian green turtles who come ashore there.

The bill, Hee said, appropriates $400,000 to help plan the park and eventually move the highway.

Hee’s other bill, SB 3036, would require the University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program to create a "North Shore beach management plan" to address the erosion problems there. Hee said the process would be "community driven," versus other plans that tend to be more driven by private development interests.

"As we’ve seen from the spate of recent erosion at Rocky Point … there’s clearly a need to think progressively or holistically about how we manage the beach, and specifically the sand itself," said Dolan Eversole, Pacific Islands regional coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coastal Storm Program.

Eversole is also with the UH Sea Grant College Program.

"Having a beach management plan specific to a region like the North Shore will really help to identify what options are available to decision-makers," said Eversole, who was also at Laniakea Saturday. "It won’t necessarily say this is the only strategy, but provide a menu of options."

The UH Sea Grant College Program completed a similar beach management plan for Kailua in 2010.

"Do you protect the private property by building a sea wall … or do you protect the beach? This is the balance that decision-makers are faced with," Eversole said. Hee’s bill would require UH Sea Grant to complete the plan in a two-year period.

Despite years of neglect by state officials in the past — particularly of the traffic problem — Hee said he was confident his measures could help bring long-term solutions to the North Shore issues.

"Sometimes the farther out you go (from town), the less attention is paid," he said. "It has been more of an afterthought as opposed to something we must do now."

But with the high-profile destructive surf, lawmakers are starting to pay attention, he said.

"It’s difficult to isolate bill one from the other. I’m sure both bills will be discussed at great length."